Student Can Be Disciplined for Off-Campus Social Media Activities
From Strategically Social - A high school student was
suspended from school following a school district hearing because of
threatening social media posts and text messages. The student’s conduct included threatening to
shoot people at the school and raping students, along with racist, sexist, and
anti-Semitic comments. Friends of the disciplined student had raised concerns
about the messages with a high school coach, who brought the allegations to the
principal. After the school
district suspended the student for 90 days, the student and his father sued the
school, administrators, and county under Section 1983 for violation of the
student’s First Amendment rights. The
district court ruled in favor of the county.
The Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeals affirmed the district court, citing the U.S. Supreme Court ruling
in Tinker v. Des Moines Indep.
Cmty. Sch. Dist. Wynar
v. Douglas County School District, No. 11-17127 (9th Cir. Aug. 29, 2013). Under Tinker, schools can prohibit speech that "might reasonably
[lead] school authorities to forecast substantial disruption of or material
interference with school activities or that collides with the rights of other
students to be secure and to be let alone." Here, the court had no trouble finding that it
was reasonable for school authorities to foresee a substantial disruption of
school activities and act based on the student’s speech. Specifically, the
Court held "[w]hatever the scope of the 'rights of other students to be
secure and to be let alone,' without doubt the threat of a school shooting
impinges on those rights. [Wynar's] messages threatened the student body as a
whole and targeted specific students by name. They represent the quintessential
harm to the rights of other students to be secure."
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